Two-Terminal Tandem Solar Cells based on Perovskite and Transition Metal Dichalcogenides

Abstract: Perovskite solar cells have shown power conversion efficiencies (PCE) comparable to cystalline silicon solar cell despite involving low-temperature, solution based synthesis processes outside clean room environment. As the theoretical PCE of a perovskite solar cell with band gap 1.55 eV is capped to 33 % due to Shockley-Queisser limit, tandem configurations are being investigated to go beyond this limit. Here, we propose a two-terminal (2T) tandem solar cell structure consisting of perovskite and multilayer transition metal dichalcogenide as the absorber layers of the top and the bottom subcells, respectively and investigate their performance parameters using Solar Cell Capacitance Simulator-1 Dimension (SCAPS-1D) software package. We demonstrate that the 2T tandem solar cell consisting of CH3NH3PbI3 with band gap 1.55 eV and MoTe2 with bandgap 1.1 eV shows PCE of maximum 35.3 % under AM 1.5 G illumination. This work motivates experimental realization of such solar cells for further investigation.